Stuck?
In case writing doesn’t come as easily to you as it does to everyone else (that’s a joke)
We all get stuck differently. I get stuck when there are too many words on the page and I can’t organize them or even see them anymore, and I no longer know what I’m saying or trying to say or who I am.
“What do you want to say?” my therapist would ask me when I complained I was blocked, and I could tell her. She’d write down what I’d say, and just like that . . . I had written.
But since my therapist doesn’t live with me, I had to get unstuck alone. Here’s what I do and what I suggest you do, too:
Explain to someone what you want to write about. Talk it out.
It can be easier to talk than to write. So, talk and talk and talk. And ask others to write down what you say. Hand movements, body language, facial expressions, etc. animate, revive, enliven, revitalize even the most boring person/conversation/idea.
Develop a crush. The easiest way to write without it feeling like work is to have a crush. Write to and for them (to send or not) (but probably not).
Optional: people may fall in love with you.
Get an ex.
For example, whenever my ex hurt me, either deliberately or by living his life without me, I’d be incapacitated by pain, but then it happened: I’d write. I’d write him long emails about how much I loved him and wanted to be loved by him, which he did not like, which did not concern me. Because there is something about exes, especially in writing about them or writing to them or talking nonstop about them, that is so enlivening, so the point of everything. It was there all along, buried, a deactivated minefield. You could almost thank the ex who crapped on your heart. Almost.
Hot tip: If you can’t write, then collect correspondence. Et voilà: what was masochism is now research.
Pitch: Turn everything you’ve written to an ex (an unappreciative audience of one) into a project. I’d wondered how to write a book—then I reread everything my ex and I had messaged each other, and there it was. We had plot twists, narrative suspense and a dramatic arc, foreshadowing and psychic surplus, a terrible, singular universal drama, a Shakespearian cycle of comedy and tragedy, tragedy, tragedy, and no ending. Then, one day, I typed in a Word document instead of an email—and now I’m a published author and he’s married to another woman who can be his therapist.
Optional: Sometimes I’ll send a text I *know* I shouldn’t or meet someone new or get dumped just to feel something again, even if it’s hate, for which I can love anyone, for making me feel and think one million things again. Someone ghosts/meets/dumps me, and suddenly I’m a very prolific poet,* the Taylor Swift of essayists, etc.
*“I have loved enough women to know how to paint. If I had loved fewer, I would be an illustrator; if I had loved more, I would be a poet.”
–In the Next Room or the vibrator play by Sarah Ruhl
Get a muse. A muse is similar to but different from a crush or an ex.
When did you first start writing? Who made you do it? There had to be someone. My someone was Taylor Hanson, of the brother boy band Hanson, my first imaginary boyfriend and muse who made me feel like I had to write until I bled and then write with the blood, and that only by writing could I live with my feelings. I was 13 and my most prolific and profound.
Get revenge. As Dorothy Parker said, “Writing well is the best revenge.”
Optional: Start a piece titled The Best Revenge, and write it really well.
Befriend productive, unstuck people and hang around them a lot and just, like, copy them.
Log out or block or delete social media from your phone, computer, and life.
Consume differently. Listen to songs/playlists that get a dead heart beating.
Accept it: you may be writing but not know it. Observing is writing. Watching TV is writing. Not writing is writing.
When I need to write but can’t, I watch shows about underdog sports teams (not actual sports) or dance squads or journalists or tech start-ups or vampire slayers who fight fights they can’t win but fight them anyway.
Pay hard attention to emotional reactions, and don’t let them go.
Most things I do not care about. But sometimes I care so much about something like Grease! Live! that I turn into a different person. A possessed person. This person is the best writer I know.
Gather momentum. It’s hard to write from a standing start. Write a little as often as you’re able, and after a while—about 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 minutes/hours/days/years—momentum builds. I hate to say it, but energy flows where attention goes.
Change the audience in your head, from critic to validating hype-person. Imagine writing to/for your fans vs. your haters. Preach to the converted.
If you believe you have no fans, then write to/for your dog/pet.
Basically, do the opposite of what you’ve been doing, and you will write faster and better.
Note: You’ll never talk your haters out of their hatred or change their unchangeable minds, so just refocus and ask me no follow-up questions.
Make quick decisions.
It took months of OCD treatment and two Brené Brown books to understand there is no “right” or “wrong” in writing (except for using adverbs, which is wrong)—there are only decisions. Writing is decision-making! Writing is solving a puzzle as you create it. Writing is deleting and not looking back.
I had that epiphany on the toilet. (Pooping is writing.)
The “right” decision or the “wrong” decision is irrelevant. The point is to decide to see if the decision works. If it doesn’t, then make another decision. The “wrong” decision gives you the information you need. So, just make one decision after another vs. get stuck on making the “right” decision and fearing the “wrong” one. Only the future will answer your questions.
Hot tip: If you can’t decide between two ideas, then write both. Stick with the one that has legs and is the most exciting-fun-easy. Again, there is no “right” answer; there is only writing.
Try cocaine. I’ve heard good things.
Research. Whenever I read on the topic I’m writing about, I’m flooded with new ideas, even when five minutes ago I had no single thought or feeling.
Shower. They say the best ideas come to you while in the shower. Take three to five showers per day. Then, to save water, drink only white wine. (Use leftover shower water to wash wine glasses.)
Masturbate, obviously.
Very often, to write, you must take a break from writing. You’re forgiven and applauded for this.
I took a break from writing my book to write an essay, and that essay became my book.
Know this: You will have different seasons with your writing. One day you can’t stop/won’t stop, and the next day you forget how to read. So, are you stuck, or is it just the first week of January?
How do you get unstuck?
Another classic way to get unstuck is to take a class, specifically with me. Here are my new 2024 seminars (I’ll add a few more soon):
How to Write a Tragicomic Memoir
February 4th (Sunday)
3-6pm EST
Online, via Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Learn to make readers laugh while RIPPING OUT THEIR HEARTS in a sad, funny book about you, your exes/parents, and your society. There will be a life-changing lecture, foolproof writing prompts, infinity handouts, an AMA, and more, a lot more.
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May 19th (Sunday)
3-5pm EST
Online, via Writing Workshops
Getting good at rejection is the secret to success, both professionally and romantically. In two hours, we'll break down rejection to understand what it tells us and how it serves us. We'll also cover how to avoid the unavoidable; how to use rejection as feedback; and how to reduce rejection hangovers. Crying is optional but encouraged.
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June 2nd (Sunday)
2-5pm EST
Online, via Writing Workshops
Tragedy plus time equals comedy, and in this three-hour seminar on "traumedy" we'll do that: turn your tragedies into comedies (or at least more entertaining tragedies) using time and many more devices that transform a diary entry into publishable writing. This seminar is perfect for writers who work across genres (fiction, nonfiction, humor, serious) or want to learn how. Happy endings will not be accepted. Prerequisite: being in therapy.
ICYMI: I’m Elissa Bassist, and I teach short conceptual humor/satire writing, funny personal essays, tragicomic memoir, emotional emails, and that’s it. I edit the “Funny Women” column on The Rumpus, and I wrote the award-deserving book Hysterical.
Consider smashing “paid” because I’m building something here and could use your support.
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Madonna one said, “I have my most contemplative moments while sitting on the toilet.” I love that inspiration comes to you while pooping, too! 💩
It’s weird, whenever I try the pomodoro method I also crave pasta...a lil crushed garlic, some basil...